IPO
Alibaba’s stock popped 35% on Friday, the much anticipated first day of trading for the Chinese e-commerce company. The shares, which were priced at $68, reached as high as $99.70 but settled around $93.89 at close of trading on Friday. Furthermore, the banks that facilitated the deal are expected to pick up their options on the shares, which would allow the company to raise a record-breaking $25 billion. Buyers overwhelmed sellers to the point where initial trading was delayed two and a half hours. Its current market cap of more than $231 billion makes the company more valuable than IBM, GM, and Proctor and Gamble. Unlike the aforementioned, though, Alibaba is not expected to pay out dividends any time soon.
Rewalk, an exoskeleton designer and manufacturer based in Israel, has seen its share price soar since being priced at $12 last week. The stock was trading at $27.78 at the close on the Nasdaq and under the RWLK ticker symbol. The company had raised over $18 million in VC, mainly from Israeli investors, before collecting $36 million through its IPO.
Things are decidedly less celebratory as Hubspot, a Boston-based online marketing and sales SaaS company, prepares for its own debut on the New York Stock Exchange. The company is reportedly losing $3 million per month, and as of its June 30th S-1 filing, had only $7.3 million in cash. The company does, however, a sufficient credit line to keep cash levels high enough for the next 12 months.
M&A
While Alibaba stole the IPO spotlight, this week saw several significant M&A deals, including Microsoft’s purchase of the Minecraft game maker Mogang, and a number of moves by some of the biggest players in the enterprise software space.
Rumors began to circulate last week, but Microsoft officially confirmed that it would be buying Mojang, a Swedish company best know for creating the Minecraft video game for $2.5 billion. Markus Persson, or Notch, the game’s creator, was not interested in running a company of Mojang’s size, and reportedly approached Microsoft about the sale. “There are only a handful of buyers to grow Minecraft on the scale that it deserves,” Mojang said through a blog post on its company website. “We’ve worked closely with Microsoft since 2012, and have been impressed by their continued dedication to our game and its development.” None of the company’s three founders will be joining Microsoft post-acquisition.
SAP has agreed to buy Concur Technologies, Inc., a publicly traded employee expense management platform, for $7.3 billion. The price represents a 20% premium over Concur’s September 17 share price. Concur has over 23,000 clients and 25 million users, 1/3 of whom already run SAP. The acquisition marks SAP’s latest foray into web-based software.
Red Hat, the global leader in open source app development, will acquire FeedHenry, a mobile app development platform founded in Ireland and a recipient of a Red Herring Top 100 award. The deal was reportedly worth $82 million, and is expected to close in Red Hat’s Q3 for the 2015 financial year. FeedHenry had raised $9 million from investors including Kernel Capital Partners, Intel Capital, and VMWare.
Amidst news that founder Larry Ellison would be stepping down as CEO, Oracle acquired Front Porch Digital, a media storage management company with over 550 customers, including A&E, BBC, and Discovery. Terms of the deal we’re not disclosed. Front Porch was founded in 2008 and is based in Louisville, Colorado.